Category Archives: Basketball

A new season recap — the 1942-43 Wyoming high school basketball season — has been added to the Season Recaps area of wyoming-basketball.com. “Stat Rat” Jim Craig’s research on this year is full of interesting pieces of information from one of the most difficult years of basketball in the state. Check it out!

Sister site wyoming-basketball.com has added a new area to its site: season recaps. Some of the season recaps that were previously posted on this blog have been moved to this area of that site. See the info below for all the details.

Thanks to the research of “Stat Rat” Jim Craig, I’ve added a new area to the site: Season recaps. https://t.co/i5CwiBhQhf

The 1943 NCAA champion Wyoming Cowboy basketball team had 15 members. Of those 15, six became head high school football coaches in Wyoming — an amazing ratio considering the total number of former UW basketball players to end up as head football coaches in the state.

The members of the 1943 national champs who went on to be head football coaches in the state were:

Vernon Jensen, of Lyman, was the head football coach at Lyman from 1948-51, going 10-9.

Antone “Tony” Katana, of Rock Springs, was the head football coach at Superior from 1948-53, going 26-24.

Earl “Shadow” Ray, of Casper, was the head football coach at Midwest in 1944, going 4-4.

Kenny Sailors, of Laramie via Hillsdale, was the head football coach at University Prep in 1942, going 0-1.

Jim Weir, of Green River, was the head football coach at Green River from 1947-52, going 38-18-3.

Donald Waite, of Scottsbluff, Neb., was the head football coach at Huntley in 1967, going 1-9.

Katana and Weir faced each other nine times while the coaches at their respective schools from 1948-51; Weir’s Wolves went 7-2 against Katana’s Dragons, with the biggest win a conference championship tiebreaker game in 1950 that helped propel Green River to the Class A title that year.

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Not all of the 15 members of the 1943 team lettered for the Cowboys that season. In all, though, 18 more Cowboy basketball lettermen beyond those on the 1943 team ended up as head football coaches in the state. However, it’s been a while since a Cowboy basketball player ended up as a head football coach; the last to do so was Ralph Winland, who lettered for the Cowboy basketball team 48 years ago, in 1968. Reverse chronologically by last letter date, they were:

Two Wyoming high schools have an opportunity to pull off a rare championship sweep — winning the track and field, football and either the basketball or wrestling championships in the same calendar year.

The basketball-track-football calendar-year sweep has only been pulled off eight times; seven of those sweeps have been at the big-school level.

However, Pine Bluffs has the chance to do this in 2016. The Hornets won the Class 2A basketball championship in March and the 2A track and field championship in May.

The football team faces long historical odds — Pine Bluffs has never won a football championship and last won a playoff game in 2003.

The first school to do a calendar-year basketball-track-football sweep was Natrona in 1939. Since then, schools that have pulled off the feat include Laramie in 1969, Cheyenne Central in 1977 and 1979, Kelly Walsh in 1981, Gillette in 2008, Natrona again in 2010 and Snake River, the only small school to pull off this kind of sweep, in 2011.

Meanwhile, Star Valley could sweep the wrestling, track and field and football titles in the same calendar year, a feat that’s even rarer. The Braves won the 3A wrestling title and followed that up with the 3A track title last spring. Let’s not forget that Star Valley is also the defending 3A football champions.

Gillette is the only program to complete this trifecta in a calendar year, and the Camels have done it twice. Gillette completed the wrestling-track-football sweep in a calendar year first in 2006 and again in 2008.

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As noted, Star Valley won the football, wrestling and track and field titles in the 2015-16 academic year. That’s only happened five times in state history, and Star Valley became the first school to do so twice. The Braves joined Cheyenne Central (1965-66), Gillette (2008-09) and Powell (2013-14) in such a sweep; Star Valley also pulled off the same championship trifecta in 1982-83.